1. Field
This disclosure relates to recovery node testing of computer systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Computer system failures can be catastrophic for government, corporate and other entities. In the case of government computer systems, highly confidential information or information that demands constant, immediate access may be lost or unavailable for extended periods of time in the event of a system failure. In the case of corporate and other entities, millions of dollars may be lost in sales, records, corporate data or other information if a computer system is down for even a few hours. In the worst cases, data may be lost permanently.
Recovery from such computer system failures is, therefore, of paramount importance to system administrators. In the most desirable situations, recovery is immediate and complete without any noticeable downtime or change to the users of the system. In order to ensure such continuity, some systems employ “hot” backup systems or load sharing in order to provide immediate availability in the event of a single or few systems failing. Even with this immediate availability, this does not address the potential situation in which an entire group of servers becomes unavailable for whatever reason.
Backup systems typically create copies of important data. More advanced systems may create images of systems so that the systems may be restored to a state identical to that preceding the failure. Some systems provide means to restore systems using these images in order to determine whether the images are functioning properly. These backup systems may restore the computer system itself (or one identical thereto), thereby destroying the current state of that system.
Throughout this description, elements appearing in figures are assigned three digit reference designators, where the most significant digit is the figure number where the element is introduced and the two least significant digits are specific to the element. An element that is not described in conjunction with a figure may be presumed to be the same as a previously-described element having the same reference designator.